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Thousands of protesters gathered in the Armenian capital on Wednesday (20 September) to denounce the Armenian government’s perceived failure to support Armenian separatists in Karabkh, after the breakaway region was forced into a humiliating surrender by Azerbaijan.

The protesters gathered on Republic Square in the heart of Yerevan. Many demanded the resignation of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who presided over defeat to Azerbaijan in a 2020 war, and now the final collapse of Karabakh’s Armenian authorities.

Harut, a 32-year-old solar engineer said: “We hope he leaves. It’s better for a leader who lost the war to leave than to stay and continue.”

He said that the defeat was all the more painful given how long Armenians had fought for Karabakh.

“It’s something that we’ve been fighting for for 30 years, for more than 30 years and now it all went for nothing.”

Opposition politicians gave speeches from a stage denouncing Pashinyan, who took power in a 2018 revolution during which he addressed rallies on the same square.

Some of those in Republic Square yelled “Artsakh!”, others “Nikol is a traitor!”

Many of those attending waved Nagorno-Karabakh flags and some scuffled with police. Others threw bottles and stones at the prime minister’s office on Republic Square.

Riot police sealed off the government offices, while military-style trucks were parked near the square amid a heavy security forces presence.

Azerbaijan said on Wednesday that it had halted its offensive after Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh agreed to a ceasefire – whose terms signalled the area would return to Baku’s control.

Armenians, who are Christian, claim a long historical dominance in the area, which they call Artsakh. Azerbaijan, whose inhabitants are mostly Muslim, links its historical identity to the territory too.

Samvel Sargsyan, 21, a student at the Theatre and Cinema University in Yerevan, who was born in Karabakh’s capital, known to Armenians as Stepanakert and to Azeris as Khankendi.

“We need Armenia to join up with Artsakh and fight,” he said.

“Armenians can’t accept another country, another religion. Why should we? Why should Armenia give a part of itself to another nation?”

Sargsyan, who was holding the red, blue and orange flag of Artsakh, added: “If we lose Artsakh, we lose Armenia. Because the next step will be Armenia.”

Another protester, Khachatur Kobelyan, said he was “really shocked with aggression of Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh”.

“I think that the UN, USA and Russia, they are the players that could do something, but I’m really very disappointed and I don’t see any hope connected with this solution.”

Armenia is member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a defense alliance which failed to act in support of Yerevan.

Pashinyan has publicly accused Russia in recent months of not doing enough to support Armenia. He said on Tuesday that unidentified forces were talking about a coup in Yerevan.

Azerbaijan said that it wanted a “smooth reintegration process” for Karabakh’s Armenians, and rejected Armenian accusations that it wanted to “ethnically cleanse” the region.

Many of those on the square evoked the memory of the Armenian genocide of 1915, referring to the massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

Read more with EURACTIV

When fierce fighting erupted in late September in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region of the South Caucasus, it fanned the flames of a centuries-old dispute. The clash is the latest in a series of tumultuous battles over who can claim the disputed enclave, a question shaped in modern times by the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

Officially, the 1,700-square-mile territory is part of Azerbaijan and is known by its Russian name, which translates to “mountainous Karabakh.” But to Armenians and the Armenian-majority population of the region, it’s known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a de facto independent state that has been outside of Azeri rule since 1988.

For centuries, Muslim Azerbaijanis and Christian Armenians, both of whom call the region home, clashed over who should control it. Russian rule began in 1823, and when the Russian Empire dissolved in 1918, tensions between newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan reignited. Three years later, Communist-controlled Russia set its sights on the independent states of the Caucasus region and began incorporating them into what would become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

At first, it was decided that Karabakh would be part of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (S.S.R.). Though historians differ on the reasons, the initial incorporation of Karabakh into Armenia is thought to have been a plan to ensure Armenian support of Soviet rule. But the Soviets’ new Commissar of Nationalities, Joseph Stalin, reversed the decision. In 1923 Nagorno-Karabakh became an autonomous administrative region of the Azerbaijan S.S.R., even though 94 percent of its population at the time was ethnic Armenian.

Though ethnic Armenians complained that Azerbaijan restricted their autonomy and claimed Azerbaijan discriminated against them, the Soviet Union was intolerant of ethnic nationalism and ignored a variety of protests against the status quo.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated in the late 1980s, the long-dissatisfied ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh petitioned to become part of the Republic of Armenia. Azerbaijan responded by trying to crush the separatists in 1988, and clashes intensified in the region. In 1991, both Azerbaijan and Armenia declared independence from the U.S.S.R., and the regional clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh flared into full-out war.

As a result, more than a million people became refugees, and around 30,000 people, including civilians, were killed. Both sides engaged in ethnic cleansing during the Nagorno-Karabakh War—the Azerbaijanis against ethnic Armenians, and Armenian forces against ethnic Azeris. Despite the brutal humanitarian toll, negotiations between the sides repeatedly broke down.

In 1994, the newly independent nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed the Bishkek Protocol, a ceasefire brokered by Russia that left Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. But though the fighting ceased, the two sides could not agree on a peace treaty.

For the last two and a half decades, Armenian and Azerbaijani troops have been divided by a contested “line of contact” laid out in the Bishkek Protocol. It has become increasingly militarized over the years, and has been called one of the world’s three most militarized borders. The Council on Foreign Relations says that given the close positioning and limited communication between military forces stationed there, “there is a high risk that inadvertent military action could lead to an escalation in the conflict.”

That’s of even greater importance because of the conflicted nations’ powerful allies. Azerbaijan is supported by NATO member Turkey, while Russia supports Armenia, making the area a potential conflagration zone. While Nagorno-Karabakh is small, the geopolitical stakes are high due to its proximity to strategic oil and gas pipelines, and its location between the powerful regional forces of Russia, Turkey, and Iran.

These nations could be drawn into the conflict and its rising death toll. Iran, which borders Azerbaijan and Armenia and has complicated relationships with both, has weighed in, warning of a “regional war,” complaining of rockets and shells striking inside its territory and placing its own troops near its border.

Can the region overcome centuries of conflict? Only time will tell—and multiple negotiated ceasefires have already been promptly broken. As the world worries about a full-scale Russo-Turkish proxy war, the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan will continue to wrestle with the regional and historic forces that have kept them intertwined, and in conflict, for so long.

Seven thousand people were killed in just six weeks in the brutal war in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh three years ago. So when Azerbaijan launched a new military offensive on Tuesday, many feared the worst. About 100 people were reportedly killed in the first few hours.

Within a day, a ceasefire was announced. The agreement includes the disbanding of the local Armenian government’s military, in what seems to be a capitulation to Azerbaijan, which had described its offensive as an “anti-terrorist operation”. Talks are due to take place on Thursday. But if the ceasefire holds, the future of desperate residents remains in doubt. Baku has demanded the dissolution of the local government in Nagorno-Karabakh and has said it plans to “reintegrate” the Armenian population. Regional officials have accused Baku of preparing a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Longstanding tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan reignited after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the region – which lies within Azerbaijan’s territory, but has a mostly Armenian population – declared independence. Since then it has run itself with Armenia’s support. But in 2020, emboldened by backing from Turkey, Azerbaijan launched an offensive and regained much of the land it had lost in the 1990s. Russian peacekeepers moved in to guard the Lachin corridor, the one road still linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.

Yet since December, Nagorno-Karabakh has been in the grip of a humanitarian crisis due to a blockade of the corridor, implemented by activists with Baku’s support. Residents describe it as an attempt to starve them into submission, forcing them to leave as supplies of food and medicine were exhausted. Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, suggested it amounted to genocide through the “secret weapon” of starvation. Fears of another conflict grew when Baku recently began massing troops along the border with Armenia and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Foreign mediators stepped up their efforts to reach a peace agreement. Then came Tuesday’s bombings.

Russia brokered the deal to end 2020’s fighting and has played a key role since the 1990s, co-chairing the Minsk group with France and the US. That cooperation is out of the window, and this time Moscow has been strikingly absent from the crisis, despite requests for help from Armenia, a long-term treaty ally. Its peacekeepers stood aside. Waging war in Ukraine is its priority, limiting its capacity and attention to deal with other matters. But many suspect that Moscow’s inaction is also payback for Armenia “flirting” with Nato, including holding joint military drills with the US. It is irked by the prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who recently complained that Russia has not protected it from Azerbaijan’s aggression, and it will enjoy the domestic discontent he now faces.

A frozen regional conflict has heated up again thanks to shifting international relations. Multiple foreign players have an interest in the region, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to reverberate and to reshape the world. The European Union’s hunt for alternative energy supplies has led it to court Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, but also gives it potential leverage. This will be necessary. Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh must be safeguarded now.